DxE also noted that one of Whole Foods CEO’s, John Mackey, is a board member of the animal advocacy group, Humane Society of the United States.
“There is an incestuous relationship between major animal advocacy organizations and animal agriculture itself,” said DxE’s press coordinator Brian Burns in a statement. “By working together to sell tortured animals’ lives as ‘humane,’ Whole Foods and The Humane Society of the United States are committing moral fraud on the public,” he said.
In a New York Times report, the owner of Petaluma Farms, Steve Mahrt said the video did not depict the whole of their operations. “They (DxE) had to go through 15 barns off and on over a year to find three chickens they could use to make their point in this video,” Mahrt told the Times.
There are currently multiple certification programs for humane animal treatment in the country, which may have differing standards on how to handle the animals that are not transparent to the consumer. For example, Certified Humane requires a minimum of two square feet per adult bird to qualify as “free-range,” while the Animal Welfare Approved program requires that chickens after their brooding period get access to at least 4 square feet of space.
